Attempts at killing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in December 2023. Zelenskyy has been subjected to a number of assassination attempts during the course of the invasion.
In order to achieve a quick victory during the invasion of Ukraine, Russia planned to have groups enter the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and destroy Ukraine's leadership.[3] Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak stated that "Russia's key intention [was] to remove the country's top leadership, create maximum panic, and try to establish its own puppet government".[4]
Attempts
2022
According to the Ukrainian government, in early February 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin instructed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov to eliminate Ukrainian leaders.[5] In early March, Ukraine intelligence said that Chechen commandos sent to assassinate Zelenskyy had been "eliminated", with help from FSB agents sympathetic to Ukraine.[6]
In February 2022, Redut PMC was ordered on a covert mission in the Kyiv region to infiltrate and eliminate the political leadership and the Ukrainian Secret Service, by storming those institutions.[7] More than one thousand fighters entered the Kyiv region for this purpose,[8] however the mission failed due to the Ukrainian government having prior intel regarding the plan, resulting in Redut losing up to 90% of their fighting force.[9]
More than 400 Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group were reported to have been in Kyiv by late February 2022, with orders to assassinate Zelenskyy and destabilise the government enough for Russia to take control.[10]
2023
In August 2023, it was reported that another alleged assassination attempt had been stopped after Ukraine's security service arrested a woman who was suspected of gathering information on Zelenskyy's trip to the Mykolaiv region.[11]
2024
In April 2024, a man was arrested in Poland and was allegedly tasked with collecting information about Rzeszow-Jasionka Airport, which is used by Zelenskyy, alongside possible aid towards Russian intelligence services on an assassination of him. [12]
In May 2024, two Ukrainian colonels were arrested for treason in an alleged plot by the FSB to create a network of agents in an attempt to subdue those close to Zelenskyy and eventually take hostage and kill the President. The arrested colonels were members of the State Security Administration, and three FSB members — Maxim Mishustin, Dmytro Perlin and Oleksiy Korne — were identified as those formulating the plot. Kyrylo Budanov, a Ukrainian general, was reported to be the first to be assassinated in the plan, originally to be carried out prior to Orthodox Easter Sunday on May 5.[13][14]
Number of attempts
During the conflict there were conflicting accounts of the number of assassination attempts made against Zelenskyy. Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak referenced the issue while speaking to the Ukrainian Pravda news outlet, saying, "Our foreign partners are talking about two or three attempts. I believe that there were more than a dozen attempts".[15]
In addition, on Saturday, 26 February 2022, an assassination attempt by a group of Chechen mercenaries was prevented on the outskirts of Kyiv with the would be assassins killed.[5]
In early March 2022, the head of Ukraine's National Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said that Zelenskyy had survived three assassination attempts in one week. Danilov credited the aid of anti-war intelligence officers within Russia's FSB who shared information with Ukrainian forces about the planned attacks by two groups of assassins from Chechnya.[16]
Response
During an interview with CBS News on 6 March 2022, U.S. secretary of stateAntony Blinken said that the Ukrainian government had prepared for the potential death of Zelenskyy in the invasion, but would not disclose additional details.[17]
^Ball, Tom (10 March 2022). "Spies accused of betraying Putin's Chechen units". The Times. Archived from the original on 29 March 2022. Retrieved 13 March 2022. Chechen fighters loyal to the Kremlin are being betrayed by Russian spies who are leaking their whereabouts to Ukrainian forces, an aide to President Zelensky has claimed. Aleksei Arestovich said that the FSB was 'quietly passing on' information about the movements of Chechen units.
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